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Animal Abuse Resulting from Wildlife Habitat Destruction 261 continuous living in nature by humans (Merchant 2005; Plumwood 2004; Tsing 2005), including within the most inhospitable environments possible from a human perspective (Robyn 2002) Second, the notion of ‘pristine nature’ implies immutable or unchanging conditions Yet, nature is inherently changeable If we re-cast the issue into the language of ‘harm’, then it becomes even more complicated To protect against intrinsic harm to the environment requires an understanding of what the environment is and how it can be harmed If ‘environment’ refers to the natural world, and if the source of value in the natural world is its selfmaintaining sustaining properties, then harm to the environment involves setbacks to these self-maintaining properties Harm to the environment, in other words, might be defined as a change from the environment’s ‘natural’, self-maintaining state The problem with this view is that the environment is not in static equilibrium; rather, it is a dynamic entity undergoing constant change Preserving the environment in its natural state is likely an impossible, and perhaps undesirable, mission (Lin 2006, p 981) So, too, when it comes to the relationship between particular kinds of habitat and particular species of animal difficult choices frequently present themselves For instance, debates presently occur over which animals are valued over others when it comes to survival dilemmas Human intervention in the lives of both wild and domesticated animals has major ramifications for species survival and biodiversity Consider, for example, the phenomenon of assisted colonisation, which involves the moving of species to sites where they not currently occur or have not been known to occur in recent history This is happening in response to climate change, and usually is directed at species in the wild ‘In the UK, two native species of butterfly were recently translocated approximately 65 km northward into areas identified by modelling as climatically suitable for occupancy by the butterflies’ (Sutherland et al 2009) The problem is that non-native species moving into new ecosystems are already recognised as a major conservation problem (see Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010) This is evidenced, for example, by the rapid expansion in the numbers of Indo-Pacific lionfish along the east coast of the USA and in the Caribbean to the detriment of native coral reef fish (Sutherland et al 2009) Assisted colonists could be viewed as invasive and as constituting a potential danger to existing ecosystems and their inhabitants Classic cases where considerable damage has resulted include the introduction of the cane toad into Australia Its subsequent spread has had colossal impacts on native species With no or few natural predators, it has proliferated and continues to take over more and more territories previously held by other endemic species
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